Director's Weekly Reports

Lamont ended last week by hosting the third annual Seismology Student Workshop (http://eesc.columbia.edu/student-life/graduate-student-life/seismology-student-workshop/), a one-of-its-kind event run exclusively by and for graduate students. The organizers for this year's workshop, held last Thursday and Friday, were Celia Eddy, Helen Janiszewski, Kira Olsen, and Zach Eilon. Participants included 39 students from 15 different universities in nine different states. The workshop featured 21 talks on a wide range of topics. A short piece on the workshop will be featured on the weekly......

Despite the turn of the page on the monthly calendar this past weekend, we again began a week with snow and ice. For yet one more Sunday evening, our Buildings and Grounds crew worked until 1 am to clear roads and walkways, and they returned at 7 am Monday morning to continue the task. Yesterday, with a new snowstorm that forced an early closure of the Observatory, they were back on the job. To Lenny Sullivan, Bruce Baez, Tom Burke, Carmine Cavaliere, Bob Daly, Tony De Loatch, Charles Jones, Stevenson Louis, Mike McHugh, Ray Slavin, Eric Soto, Kevin Sullivan, and Rick Trubiroha, an entire campus is once again in your debt. Thanks, guys!

On Sunday, even before the week’s snow, several Lamont scientists served as judges at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair, a city-wide science competition for..........

The Lamont Campus was saddened to learn this week of the death of former Lamont laboratory technician and analyst Nadia Kostyk. Nadia worked at the Observatory for more than two decades, from August 1966 until September 1987, initially as a Senior Research Staff Assistant and later as a Staff Associate. A few reminiscences by Lamont alumnus and Adjunct Senior Research Scientist Richard Bopp can be found on our web site (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/files/uploaded/image/file/Nadia%20Kostyk.pdf).

Balancing the loss was a mix of good news and reports of progress on many fronts....

One week after the Boston area set a record for snowfall within a 30-day period, record low temperatures for the date were reached this week in Chicago, New York, and other Midwestern and eastern cities. It is a winter to remember.

Notwithstanding the cold temperatures, there is good news to warm the spirit.

I am pleased to announce that Christine McCarthy has been named a Lamont Assistant Research Professor, effective this month. An expert in the experimental measurement........

For a third week in a row, Monday brought wintry weather that kept many close to home. That the campus opened and operated as usual was once again thanks to the extra efforts of our Buildings and Grounds team.

On Monday, Lamont welcomed Laura (Lori) Nunemann as the Business Manager for the Observatory’s newly organized Marine and Large Programs Division. Lori comes to Lamont after nine years at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where among other responsibilities she coordinated the construction on behalf of the National Science.......

For a second week in a row, campus operations were disrupted by snow, the result this week of a storm that began Sunday night. And once again, Lenny Sullivan, Bruce Baez, Tom Burke, Carmine Cavaliere, Bob Daly, Tony De Loatch, Charles Jones, Stevenson Louis, Mike McHugh, Ray Slavin, Eric Soto, Kevin Sullivan, and Rick Trubiroha put in a long night to clear and salt campus roads and walkways. From 1:30 am on Sunday night until the middle of the next day, our 13-man crew worked to ensure that our offices and labs could open at 11 am on Monday. For another week, thank you, gentlemen!

Tuesday also brought the announcement that the 2015 Vetlesen Prize will go to volcanologist Stephen Sparks of the University of Bristol. Hallmarks of the extraordinarily broad contributions to volcanology by Prof. Sparks are his combination of novel ideas with fluid dynamical models thoroughly tested against.....

Notwithstanding the seasonally cold weather, Lamont has warmly welcomed a number of new arrivals to the campus in the past couple of weeks.

Karen Buck joined our office of Strategic Initiatives, Development and External Relations last week as Major Gifts Officer. Karen brings two decades of experience as a senior development professional in higher education. She has worked at the City University of New York Graduate Center, New York University, and The New School....

Mark Cane learned this week that he has been named a Fellow of The Oceanography Society. Fellows are “individuals who have attained eminence in oceanography through their outstanding contributions to the field of oceanography or its applications during ......

This week and last have been relatively quiet, with two holidays and many taking time off to be with family and friends. Even Nature and Science magazines schedule breaks this time of year from their weekly pace of successive issues.

Those of us in warm and comfortable settings should pause to raise a toast to those from Lamont who are in the field over the holidays, including those featured on The.....

Many from Lamont joined the annual migration this week to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. With nearly 24,000 attendees this year, the meeting has once again drawn complaints from many that it has become far too large. Most of those complaining this week, however, are at the meeting...

The week before the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting is always unusually busy. This week featured both the last day of fall semester classes on Monday and the start of the holiday party season at Lamont. Holiday festivities were kicked off on Thursday by the Geochemistry Division’s holiday luncheon, organized by Arlene Suriani and her colleagues and held in the Comer Café. This morning, the staff of the Lamont Café – Chef Richard, Beth, Laura, Seth, and Joe – hosted a complimentary holiday breakfast...

The highlight of this week is the daylong symposium today in honor of Dave Walker and his many scientific contributions to petrology and its applications to our understanding of Earth, the Moon, and other solar system bodies. The symposium, entitled “From the core to magmas to beyond the Earth,” is ongoing in the Comer seminar room. Presenters this morning included Abby Kavner (UCLA), Jackie Li (Michigan), Raj Dasgupta (Rice), Liz Cottrell (Smithsonian).......

Nano Seeber overlapped with Gary in graduate school and remembers him well. Nano writes, “Back in 1966-67, Gary and I were graduate students under Jack Oliver. We took on the task of developing one of the first portable seismometers. Gary was.....

This week was notable for mid-term elections that left maps of Congressional and Senate districts with a substantially redder appearance. The implications of these election results for the budgets of federal science agencies this year and next will play out over the next several months.

I spent Monday and Tuesday at Purdue University as a member of the External Review..........